Monday, August 31, 2009

The boy sneaks food. I’ve seen him. His appetite is formidable, and he knowingly eats more than he should or must, to the steady concern and occasional consternation of his parents.

Sometimes they keep count: “How many pretzels?” Sometimes they vainly suggest an apple instead. Often they look away, not wanting to aggravate an eating-related anxiety that they can already sense in him on the cusp of adolescence.

The girl treats food warily. Edging into adulthood, she worries about what too many French fries — what any French fries — could do to her, and monitors her waistline even though her own parents have never exhorted her to. Does she monitor it too closely and joylessly? Can parents prevent that? They wonder. So do I.

Neither of these children, with whom I interact occasionally, comes close to being a statistic or case study. He isn’t obese; she isn’t anorexic.

But they represent a larger group of young people between those widely publicized (and much more complicated) extremes. And they speak to a subtler parental challenge: how to coach children away from unhealthy eating without sowing panic; how to make them conscious of their intake without making them too self-conscious about its consequences.

Over recent years, worry about what and how much children eat has intensified, in part because of the regular references to childhood obesity as an epidemic. And right now, as children head back to school, where they graze beyond the gaze of parents, potentially dangerous eating habits are getting fresh attention.

School cafeterias and vending areas have become ground zero in the battle against overweight and poorly nourished children; from coast to coast this fall, students will encounter fewer sugary soft drinks, fewer fried foods, class birthday parties without cupcakes and class bake sales with calorie-reduced brownies.

That may help. But it’s just one piece of a puzzle that health experts and concerned parents are still sorting out. Conflicting information about the fiercest culprits in child weight gain abounds. Beyond genes, which obviously play a fundamental role, is soda pop a major factor? What about too little sleep?

There are hundreds of studies and thousands of opinions, and Tom Baranowski, a professor of pediatric nutrition at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, says they’re inconclusive. He has reviewed research suggesting that there are viral prompts for childhood obesity and research suggesting that children fond of fruits and vegetables aren’t any less heavy than those mad for Mountain Dew.

Dr. Baranowski’s verdict? “A lot more work needs to be done.”

Diet, it seems, is a dirty word. A Stanford University study found that a father’s projected attention to and remarks about a daughter’s weight may increase her risk of eating disorders. A University of Minnesota study found that children whose parents encouraged diets were significantly more likely to remain overweight than those whose parents didn’t.

Cynthia M. Bulik, the director of the University of North Carolina Eating Disorders Program, explained that “diet” implies deprivation, “and deprivation goes into that whole mindset that, ‘I deserve something when this is over, and this is short term.’ And it can’t be. It’s got to roll right into a lifestyle.”

Those words ring true for me. As a fat boy who ate expansively and compulsively, I went on the first of many strict diets at age 8 — and thereby commenced decades of untenable regimens and compensatory pig-outs, of binging and purging.

But my outsize hunger seemed flat-out chromosomal, and my insecurity about it predated those early weight-loss schemes. Should my parents have forbidden them? What’s the best course for today’s parent, in a society where fast-food come-ons drown out Alice Waters, and models no thicker than swizzle sticks still rule fashion magazines?

“We get nutrition advice, but that’s not the same as eating advice,” said Rebecca Saidenberg, a Manhattan mother of a 16-year-old girl, referring to child-rearing tips. She said that as her daughter went through puberty, she worked particularly hard to encourage healthy habits — balanced meals, restrained portions — in the hopes of minimizing the chances of a weight problem that might follow her daughter through life.

At the same time, Ms. Saidenberg wanted to push back against “a trend of treating food like medicine.”

“I don’t like that,” she said. “There are a lot of psychological pleasures that come from sitting at a table and enjoying a meal.” She doesn’t want her daughter deprived of those.

So she didn’t despair when the teenager recently returned from a summer trip to Italy during which, it was clear, the joys of gelato were fully explored. But she did get herself and her daughter a membership at a local gym, where they go together.

In my conversations with Ms. Saidenberg and other parents, I was struck by just how much thought they had given to coaxing their children toward sensible eating and away from extreme indulgence or self-denial. They clearly saw that as a parental responsibility akin to giving a child a first-rate education.

But their prescriptions and beliefs diverged, illustrating the elusiveness of a ready consensus about what’s most effective.

Joan Yamini, a mother of one in Austin, Tex., said it was important not to have unhealthy foods around the house, but Andrew Segal, a father of three in Glen Ridge, N.J., said that children who can’t find cookies, ice cream and similar snacks at home can always find them elsewhere — and probably will.

Every parent fretted over the right language to use with children.

Janis Azarela, a mother of three in Sudbury, Mass., recalled the upset her husband caused a few weeks ago when he questioned their 16-year-old daughter’s decision to eat ice cream immediately following a three-mile run.

“He asked because she’d just worked so hard to run and be healthy — why not make a healthier choice?” Ms. Azarela recalled. “And she said, ‘Dad, are you calling me fat?’ ” The teenager abandoned the ice cream, stomped out of the kitchen and didn’t speak to him for a good long while.

Ms. Azarela said that her daughter is, in fact, slim, and gravitates naturally toward less fattening foods. Her 7-year-old son, on the other hand, has the fiercest sweet tooth in the brood. A budding problem? Time will tell, and meanwhile she has vowed to “keep reintroducing foods, because palates change so quickly.”

That’s consistent with advice from diet and nutrition experts, who agree, for the most part, on a few prudent strategies.

They say parents can and should encourage sensible eating and vigorous physical activity by engaging in both themselves; children are likely to imitate those behaviors.

Whether parents allow junk food or not, they should make sure healthier alternatives are even more available — and should promote them. They should also make time for family dinners, the nutritional content of which they can monitor more carefully than they can a quick meal in an economical restaurant.

And by actually involving children in the shopping for, and cooking of, meals, some parents have successfully given them a consciousness about food — and a way to think about it — that guards against an abuse or disregard of it. When it comes to overeaters who clearly thrill to that gluttony, it’s vital for parents to try to find some replacement activity — a hobby, say — that affords similar emotional gratification.

“Food lights some people up more than it lights other people up,” Dr. Bulik said. “We’re not born the same.”

I see that in the boy and girl. If they were merely emulating their parents, he’d be the measured eater and she the exultant one. That the opposite is true underscores the mysteries of appetite — and the tricky task parents face in trying to regulate it.

Frank Bruni is the author of a new memoir, “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.”